Contributors

December 2008

December 29, 2008

If you’ve not heard the commentary for Battlefield, this month’s dvd release yet, you’re in for a treat. For much of its duration writer of the story Ben Aaronovitch sounds like he’s about to jump from the roof of 2Entertain Towers because of the horror which is unfolding before him and then story editor Andrew Cartmel is talking him down from the ledge largely through the negotiation tactic of agreeing with him a lot. All that actors Sophie Aldred and Angela Bruce can do is sit and watch and perhaps munch some popcorn as the more exciting drama happens in the recording booth.

What’s even scarier is that this year’s Christmas trip into the psyche of Russell T Davies or as the BBC like to call it the Doctor Who podcast is in places almost exactly the same. It’s quite refreshing if slightly odd to hear the creatives clearly unhappy with portions of an episode which hasn’t yet been broadcast and though Davies never quite contracts Aaronovitchs-by-proxy, you can tell that Gardner wishes that he wasn’t being quite so critical, even though she largely agrees with him during that scene were the one and a half Doctors in the drawing room of the ‘dead’ man trying to work out who he could be.

Andrew Cartmel is talking him down from the ledge

What disappoints me about these opinions is that it was my second favourite scene. They aren’t happy because it breaks all of the rules that have been set up in relation to how Doctor Who should be shot these days – no shakey-cams, no neutral lighting, and no succession of close-ups – too prime time midweek rather than teatime Saturday. Which is all the reasons I loved it – an intimate scene played and lensed in a claustrophobic manner in the middle of the usually brash and loud Christmas special. Congratulations to Andy Torchwood Goddard for trying something new.

Which is rather the problem with the rest of the podcast; throughout I found myself grimacing as I realised that everything I liked about the episode seemed to be an accident or not an original Davies idea. For example my actual favourite scene: Ten Doctors. Ten fucking Doctors. Ten. All of them. Projected on a wall. Even Sylvester McCoy. On Christmas Day. Squee. You’d think that Davies would be the one pleading with Gardener to have that put in, but it turns out it was the other way around. It turns out the reason that the past four years haven’t been drowning in a sea of continuity/fanwank is because Russell has been holding himself back.

Even Sylvester McCoy. On Christmas Day. Squee.

If the Journal of Impossible Things from Human Nature didn’t convince the McGann heretics that he wasn’t canon, then seeing his eyes squinting into the middle distance here, in a shot which must have cost thousands of pounds to license from Fox TV (possibly), has to be the clincher. I love the idea that there is a youngster who’s only really been watching the new series, suddenly being greeted with these new incarnations and finding a whole new universe of adventures to enjoy; it’s The Brain of Morbeus effect without some other members of the production team muddying the timestream.

Equally, the stuff which Russell is clearly very pleased with, such as the Cybermen in the snow, I was a bit vanilla about. As I say in my proper review of the episode (which is published here, and much better than this one so you should probably have read it instead), these Cybus Industries models lack personality and the Doctor can’t have a conversation with them. If you have returning monster which needs a human face, something has gone wrong. I can’t help feeling that the enemy would have had more potency if it had been some new danger or even a different revived monster. The Ice Warriors haven’t been busy lately and I would have loved to have seen a giant one of those striding about.

The Ice Warriors haven’t been busy lately

I also wasn't that happy when he was talking about why he'd resolved the mystery of the other Doctor quite so early. I can understand why he did it -- there's only so much you can do to sustain something like that when there's a clever timelord in the story who'll work things out super quickly. Couldn't there have been an in story reason for the Doctor not to reveal his suspicions in quite such a bald manner. It wouldn't have been entirely out of character but perhaps I'm just browned off that none of my predictions turned out to be exactly true (I thought he might be human, but that he'd sucked up some of the regenerative energy somehow from the tail end of The Stolen Earth).

Still this was a decent hour of entertainment for Christmas night and though, like most of these things its unlikely to turn up in any ten best lists, it was just the right stop gap between the steak (we’re not a turkey household) and mince pies and The Other Boleyn Girl which is what I watched later on and had far more issues with (such as why you’d call a film that and then simply retell the story from Anne’s point of view again anyway). I’ll miss Julie and Russell when they leave the booth for the final time, but at least we’ve another four specials to potentially hear them talking over first.

December 28, 2008

The worst thing about Christmas when you're not feeling well is that it just becomes an exercise in going through the motions.

This year, I've spent most of the festive period sneezing and snuffling and coughing my guts up, enjoying Christmas dinner and Boxing Day trips to see the extended family across the country, but not really being into it as much as everyone else.

And that's how The Next Doctor felt to me. It was fun, it wasn't demanding, but it felt like going through the motions, particularly after the grotesque excesses of The Swollen Earth.

As a piece of drama, it seemed strangely flat and lacking in either urgency or threat, largely through some truly plodding, leaden direction by Torchwood refugee Andy Goddard. There was no ship plummeting to Earth, no lurking menace hanging in the skies above Earth - as with the last three years of festive Who. Take out the references to Christmas and this would have worked in the same way that the previous three specials wouldn't. It wasn't special. Not by a long chalk.

hoping we'd hear Cyber Dervla asking where her fucking keys where

And there was the Cyberking. I know people have drawn comparisons with Transformers, and given Russell's tendency for cross-cultural looting and pillaging that would come as no surprise. But watching the big metal lug stomping across London, I couldn't help but think of XOTANG, the giant grumpy mechanoid of quirky BBC Three comedy The Wrong Door, and hoping we'd hear Cyber Dervla asking where her fucking keys where...

Appropriately, much like The Wrong Door, there were a lot of instances in this episode where the visual effects failed to match up to the promise. Not just with the Cyberking's attempt to restage Cloverfield, but even the more basic stuff such as Tennant swinging off the exploding factory ledge with Lake Jr, which featured perhaps the worst green screen in the show's recent history.

As with The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, there was a sense of the writer and production team tying up loose ends. We've had the void, the Daleks and now the Cybermen from One Canada Square all being dealt with over the last year or so now, as the RTD era officially starts to wind down.

The other problem I had with The Next Doctor is a more fundamental one, and something that will be no longer an issue by mid 2010.

The first half of The Next Doctor had the potential to be an interesting exercise in character. Namely, what is it that makes our favourite Time Lord the Doctor. Is it personality, backstory, behaviour or what? And if you transpose those actions, beliefs and behaviour onto someone who isn't the Doctor, what does that make the person?

Morrissey turned in a grotesquely panto-esque performance that suggested the infostamp backwash had got stuck on Colin Baker

The idea of The Doctor encountering someone who may or may not be him, or who has assumed the mantle, is a fascinating one. Big Finish, of course, tried something in that vein with The One Doctor, while a proposed spin-off series from Death Comes To Time, according to it's producer, would have had Stephen Fry's Minister of Chance crusading through space and time taking the Doctor's place and, ultimately, his name, as though it were the title and actions that maketh the man.

And if only that's what we'd received here. Instead, through both writing and performance, we ended up with a piece of caricature. Morrissey, normally such a subtle and honest actor, turned in a grotesquely panto-esque performance that suggested the infostamp backwash had got stuck on the Colin Baker era files.

There's long been a complaint that decent actors (Crowden, I'm looking at you) turned it up to 11 when cast in old Who, and that still seems in evidence today going by Morrissey's turn in the role. Curiously, he and Tennant seemed to lark any on-screen spark, all the more ironic given how much the pair lit up the screen in Blackpool.

And to be fair, he wasn't helped by a script that had the character turn from bombastic comic book hero to snivelling crybaby, then emasculated him in favour of giving the Doctor another valedictory hero moment as he rescued Jackson's son from the Temple of Doom... sorry, the Cyberking's intestines.

Yes, before the moaning starts, I know the show's called Doctor Who, but in an episode which could have been about the nature of the Doctor's character, to give the heroic rescue moment to a character that doesn't need it seems a bit OTT. But then, this is a Davies script, and RTT and OTT seem to go together perfectly.

And was it just me, or did Tennant look absolutely knackered here? I know it's a tough gig, but there were times during The Next Doctor where young Mr MacDonald looked positively drained. Between a lacklustre, tick-box script, plodding direction and Tennant clearly shattered after carrying the show for three years, this felt a Christmas episode too far.

There were lots of little gifts in the episode, but they were trinkets and stocking fillers

Now, I know I risk sounding like the Grinch by expressing such dissatisfaction with The Next Doctor. So for the sake of balance, and because they deserve mention, what was likeable about the episode?

Well, Dervla Kirwan was, for a start. Creepy, cheeky, playful - this is exactly what a Doctor Who villain needs to be. Even one that spends 99% of her screen time not encountering the Doctor. Likewise Velile Tshabalala, playing Generic Spoof Dr Who Assistant No. 41, made a hugely underwritten character likeable. That opening gag, as seen on Children in Need and YouTube for the last month or so, works perfectly. As does the reveal of the other TARDIS.

There were lots of little gifts in the episode, but they were trinkets and stocking fillers, distracting from the coal at the bottom.

It's just a shame the episode was Doctor Who by numbers. For a Christmas Day feast, this felt very much like warmed up Boxing Day leftovers.

But then, what do I know? I'm Scottish. We're more about Hogmanay than Christmas anyway, in which case bliadhna mhath ur to you all at home...

This isn't just Doctor Who, this is lowest common denominator Doctor Who...

The most infuriating thing about The Next Doctor is that it takes a brilliant idea and then it casually tosses it away in favour of the safest and dullest alternative imaginable. Here was Russell's chance to take the multi-doctor formula and really have some fun with it; it's as if Time Crash had been designed to prime a new audience for just this kind of eventuality, and the future incarnation twist would have been a fascinating and original avenue for the show to explore. Or how about a parallel universe Doctor chasing down some marooned Cybermen and clashing with our Doctor and his way of doing things? In fact, any other explanation for November's teaser that you could care to mention would have been more more interesting than what we eventually ended up with: socks. For the third Christmas running Russell has given us socks.

Sometimes he breaks my heart.

The mystery of Morrissey's character is undermined from the very beginning; as soon as he opens his mouth to be precise. His costume left plenty of wriggle room but his Dickensian vernacular immediately gives him away; it would have been too much of a coincidence (even for Russell) if this incarnation of the Doctor just happened to be hanging around Victorian London when we stumble across him. That would be like David Tennant swanning about contemporary London most of the time. Er...

But if that was too subtle for you don't worry, there's always the "sonic" screwdriver to ram home the fact that he isn't really a time lord. And if that sailed over your egg-nogged noggin perhaps you finally twigged when Rosita turned out to be a contemporaneous companion. Then again, it's hardly worth the effort of playing along with this halfhearted mystery because they spill the beans inside the first 20 minutes and then explain it away five minutes after that. And guess what? Yes, that's right: he isn't the Doctor after all! A cop-out explanation on Doctor Who, who'd have thunk it? He is, in fact, a blubbering, whining ponce who cries a lot. But enough of that,
here's Murray Gold with some comedy oomp-pah-pah music.

The Cybershades made the Taran Wood Beast look like the Cloverfield monster...

OK. Fair enough. It was inevitable that he wasn't going to be the 11th, 12th or even the 34th incarnation of our hero (I suppose), but of all the reasons Russell could come up for Jackson's warped state of mind he
reaches for the most ridiculous contrivance possible: the poor man was mind-wiped by the
Dalek's Doctor Who DVD collection that the Cybermen stole just before areality bomb tore down the walls of the voidiverse and they fell through time to our planet in 1851 where they proceed to build a giant robot under the Thames with the help of some street urchins and a bitter and twisted prostitute. WTF???

It's so badly executed I tried to convince myself that it was just clever misdirection; Russell did promise a "huge plot twist" and he never lies. Maybe this would all turn out to be an ingenious double-bluff and a final, gut-punching revelation would at least whet my appetite for the 2009 specials. But it wasn't to be; these socks didn't hide some jewel-encrusted cuff links within their folds, they were just full of holes.

Spare a thought for the poor old Cybermen who come out of this incoherent mess looking like complete dolts. Just what the hell were they doing anyway? Did they steal the Dalek's copy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when they ran off with their info-stamp collection? Or did John Barrowman have a special deal going with a job-lot of Oliver rejects? And just what was the deal with the Cybershades? They were so preposterous they managed to make the Taran Wood Beast look like the monster from Cloverfield. I know there's a credit crunch but I could have knocked up something better in my garage. Especially now that voice-changer helmets are on sale in Woolworths.

David Morrissey was disappointing. I'm a big fan of the actor (One Summer,Holding On, State of Play and The Deal are some of the best dramas ever produced for television, largely thanks to him) and I tipped him for the role of the Doctor back in 2003. But he's completely wasted here. His "Doctor" is pure pastiche and his "real" persona is a sniveling jerk who doesn't even get to save the day in his own episode. He manages to crack the caps on some info-stamps but that's about it. He doesn't even get to fly in his own sodding balloon or rescue his own kid! How poor was that? Then again how useful could he have been against a giant robot sloshing around in the Thames. Yes, a giant f***ing robot.

Remember the winter of '75 when Tom Baker battled a giant robot? It looked terrible, didn't it? But at least it made sense In the context of the story, in so much as the robot didn't mysteriously turn up in the last 10 minutes. This time the giant robot in question looked magnificent (I'm told that the Managing Director of Character Options creamed himself at precisely the same moment that Ted Hughes started to revolve in his grave) but it made no sense whatsoever. Normally you can let this kind of stuff slide but its appearance is so incongruous and so f***ing stupid the Doctor tries to explain it away as a giant space ship! As if that somehow makes it better!

Exactly how bloody voidy is this so-called void?

Let me get this straight... the Cybermen from the parallel universe - you know, the one where they don't come from Telos or Mondas but are in fact a bunch of converted chavs and vagrants from Guildford - have developed a fleet of battleships called Cyberkings that walk about on two legs and look like a cross between The Iron Giant and The Power Rangers with just a hint of MechaGodzilla thrown in for good measure. And when did that happen, exactly? Did the Cybermen develop them in the void? And if they did, how bloody voidy is this so-called void, anyway? Do they have shops? Factories? Solid surfaces? I don't know about you lot but I thought the void was a terrible place where the Daleks and the Cybermen floated about endlessly in a vast, empty nothingness. Turns out they've been developing giant robots, putting together extensively researched Wikipedia info-stamps for every possible contingency and generally having a whale of a time. So how did the Doctor know about these Transfor-- er, Cyberkings given that they were trapped in a universe that's, ahem, impossible to access? Unless the "real" Cybermen developed the stupid things, in which case how did the parallel ones know about them?

Or maybe - just maybe - the Daleks planted some duff info about a fleet of Cyberkings in a dodgy info-stamp to see if the daft bastards would fall for it. Either that or they inadvertently mixed up their blueprints with the video to the Beastie Boy's Intergalactic which they stored on an mp3 player that looks like a 16 inch vibrator. It could happen. Especially when the read-through is due to take place tomorrow and it's 2am already... Tut, tut, Russell.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. There are some enjoyable moments to savour: the Cybermen stomping through the snow felt iconic, the brainwashed workhouse goons were suitably terrifying, the flashback was rather pleasant (and so JNT it's scary) but it was the deliciously innuendo-strewn performance from Dervla Kirwan as Miss Hartigan that simultaneously stole and saved the show for me. She managed to exude menace, style, wit and a Palinesque sexiness (that's Sarah, not Michael, just in case you're wondering) that felt just right - and so very wrong. She's has to be one of the most memorable and fruity villains we've ever seen on this show (which is really saying something) and I even bought her last-minute stab at redemption. I mean, bloody women. I'm not entirely sure what it was she was trying to accomplish but good on her for trying.

I know that I should be grateful for these socks. It's the thought that counts and all that. And they are a very well-made pair of socks that occassionally feel very comfortable indeed, but they are still just a pair of socks at the end of the day. And that huge, glittering box with the gold leaf ribbon on top promised so much...

December 26, 2008

The thing about Doctor Who
Christmas specials is that they are now traditionally required to fulfill a number of
audience expectations. They have to be brash, no nonsense populist
affairs with an ersatz seasonal message or spirit of intention. It's no
good examining the plot that closely or digging around for complex
existential homilies because it won't stand up to the pressure.

At the heart of this 'Cybermen at Christmas' bluster is a deeply personal story...

However,
Russell T Davies usually sows the seeds of the forthcoming series into
the Specials and the one thing that immediately strikes you about The Next Doctor
is, deliberately or not, the way it marks time on the tenure of the
Tenth Doctor. With no full series to anticipate, this special makes pains to show the Doctor has clearly made a decision to travel without
a companion and has set out to explore on his own. Meeting Jackson Lake
is Davies attempt to underline this whilst also getting both
characters, whose fractured identities require some mending, to engage
in a form of neuro-linguistic psychotherapy. The Doctor suddenly
questions his current incarnation's future and eventual demise. And
Lake is a blank canvas onto which the essence of the Doctor has been
stamped but which then helps him to excavate the true qualities of the real person
drowned by his psychological fugue. By this estimation, Davies
certainly bucks the trend for at least half an hour of the running time. At the heart of this 'Cybermen at Christmas'
bluster is a deeply personal story which delves into identity, anxiety
and the effects of dissociative fugue. With Lake it's brought about with
a traumatic attack on his family by the Cybermen but with the Doctor
it's presumably self-imposed after the treatment he dished out to Donna Noble.

The trouble is that such a heartfelt
story, and by extension the twin performances from Morrissey and
Tennant, deserves an episode to itself and not mashed in with the cold
leftovers of street urchins, Victoriana, snow, explosions and Cybermen. Mind you,
Christmas can be as much an emotionally distressing time for families
as it is a time of joy and good will to all men (the emphasis here being on men, Cyber or otherwise) so perhaps such an
examination of the Doctor's persona and nature isn't too far from the
true spirit of the festive season. The whistles and bells that decorate
the central premise of the empty man who needs his life and memories
back and the lonely god who just can't take this shit any more include the
bluff with the fob-watch that then turns out to be an important clue
and the info-stamp flashback of all ten incarnations which you could
say is pretty much about putting the writing on the wall for the Tenth. When a flashback of all the previous actors in the role turns up, you know your card's marked.

...utterly daft

When
you look at the rest of the story it's clear that Hartigan's
collaboration with the Cybermen, using children to re-engineer a
Cyber-Godzilla, is utterly, preposterously daft. The entire sequence in the workhouse
with masses of kids turning big wheels, pulling chains and levers just
needed to be set to music, given some suitable lyrics and you'd have
had a West End musical. Sure, it may dovetail with Dickens own attempts
to pick apart the effects of industrialisation on society in Hard Times and A Christmas Carol
but this was more Lionel Bart than Ebenezer Scrooge. I did enjoy
Dervla's turn as Miss Hartigan, the mother/whore symbol trying to get a leg up (or over) in a man's world. The ripe tones used in countless
M&S ads came in handy as she made a delicious villainess who
arrived complete with a feminist liberation agenda. The gathering at
the funeral is an interesting framing device for the character. She is
positioned in the charitable role, looking after the poor in the
workhouses, that many aspiring women of the day sought to do but uses the
potency of her sexuality as a way to achieve power in an unjust and unequal society. Hence, the obvious
symbolism of the red dress but also her assumption that the Cybermen
are simply tools of industrialising power at her disposal to rid
society of the kind of greedy, exploitative men she despises. It's an exciting, well edited,
sequence as Cybermen emerge from the snow and mist and throttle people.
Well, I say people, but men...mostly.

Men, eh? Bloody liars...

The
contrast between Miss Hartigan and Rosita is of note too. From the
implications of Hartigan's 'I doubt he paid you to talk' we thus gather
that Rosita is a lady of the night. Hartigan seems to be confusing the
sexual act and liberation and whilst she can talk the talk she
certainly doesn't walk the walk. Rosita is compassionate and human
whereas Hartigan is ice-cold ambition, preferring the company of
Cybermen than that of real men. One of them definitely will be Nancy in the West End musical production,
clearly after the wallop Rosita gives Hartigan. Velile
Tshabalala was very impressive in the quieter moments, with sensitive
playing particularly in the scene where the Doctor reveals that the
other Doctor is Jackson Lake. Quite neat then that the Cybermen are
simply setting up Hartigan to be the Cyber King. Men, eh? Bloody liars.
But why did the Cybermen need to enslave loads of kids to power their
ship, couldn't they do that themselves? A highly contrived notion to
get masses of children to shovel coal into the belly of the Cyber-King,
this was obviously some heavy symbolism about the continuing
exploitation of children in the 21st century. It's enough to put you off your pudding.

A rather excessive bit of symbolism there, Russell, me old chuck.

Forty five minutes
in and this goes a bit pear shaped. A blend of Dickensian steam-punk
Gothic with a very tender story about two psychologically broken men gets sadly
derailed by the need to have a big special effects climax with explosions and things. More
ho-ho-hum than ho-ho-ho. Hartigan suddenly gets the screaming ab-dabs
as the threat of Cyber-liberation looms. The Cybermen are just as narrow minded as their Victorian counterparts and it seems independent women have no place in Cyberdom. However, I rather liked the way that Hartigan then
rewrote the software and put the willies up the Cyberleader in another
twist on the power of sex over the sexless. Dervla is terrific in this
scene, with her black contact lenses and brass worked Cyber head. And I
suppose the old adage 'behind every great (Cyber) man is a great
(Cyber) woman' is the only way to describe the Iron Man rising from the
Thames and stamping the populace to bits. A rather excessive bit of symbolism there, Russell, me old chuck. And history gets further bent out of shape in the process but then no one on Earth ever gives a toss about alien invasions these days, and now, in those days too. The Doctor's offer is a bit
pointless isn't it? Why would Hartigan want to be dumped on another
world with no one to convert? Her whole raison d'etre is to do just
that. It's very handy that the Doctor can recondition Hartigan at the
drop of a hat and it's rather silly that she suddenly, as a result,
becomes a screaming girlie. With such powerful screams that it all goes
tits up for the Cybermen and she and they blow up? Er, what exactly
happened there?

It's
all entertaining enough with some de rigeur eye-popping visual effects and the
sentimental ending suggests a Doctor not quite given up on mixing with
the plebs at Christmas time but, I don't know about you, I was
expecting some last minute twist ending to lead us off into the
specials for 2009. So, it all felt like a bit of damp squib of an
ending with no punchline to whet our appetites for next year. Andy
Goddard's direction was spirited, with some lovely visual compositions
and great lighting and, as ever, the production values were very high.
Murray Gold was somewhat in 'this music will tell you how to feel' mode
and I didn't much care for it. I did think that David Morrissey
somewhat eclipsed David Tennant in places and that's a shame in a way
as it's unlikely that we'll see him as the actual Doctor in a future
series. However, he did get rather sidelined towards the end as David Tennant went through the heroic motions. There's a real sense here that the tenth Doctor is about to
exit stage left. He doesn't look particularly happy once he's met with
Jackson, possibly because he sees himself reflected back, and there's a
weary inevitability about how he moves through the story. Change is in
the air, and on the strength of this festive romp, it's perhaps not a moment too soon.

Since not even Stuart has written a review of The Next Doctor in the fifteen or so hours since the epsiode aired, here's a post created just so that any of you who happen to have something to say about the episode can feel free to get a head-start on the bickering discussion and do so here. Enjoy!

December 21, 2008

I’m well on record as being something of a fan of Lance Parkin’s Doctor Who books. The Dying Days helped to define the fundamentals of the Eighth Doctor and his later Father Time I described on here as “awesome” and “one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time. Period…” so the idea of the author writing a Tenth Doctor novel is a tantalising prospect. Unlike most of the other novels in the range, it’s impossible to read this without any preconceived notions. For the past nine months Parkin has been keeping blog, in which he’s described the processes of writing The Eyeless (no spoilers!), from commission through to publication.

So as I sat down on the train with these two hundred and forty odd pages I had a fair few questions. How would he really cope with the all too restrictive but necessary rules regarding content and particularly continuity? Would this still read like a Lance Parkin novel or would he, like many of the other writers, find themselves ultimately subsumed by the format and produce something that could have anyone’s name printed on the cover? Would I be able to see how he reorganised the structure of the second half? Some answers below, though for those who want to skip the rest of the review until they’ve read the book I will say that Parkin has yet again delivered, with a story that intrigues and excites and even if you’ve not read one of these novels before, this is one to make time for.

December 16, 2008

'Nice one, Mrs.W' as Clyde and Luke
are smothered in exploding Bane matter when Wormwood blasts her assailants. The gang realise that UNIT are
also on the trail and hide out in Gita's flower shop with Mrs. Wormwood and
Lethbridge-Stewart. It's here that Sarah Jane asks the very pertinent
question, around which the whole story is built, 'Don't you have any
children of your own...?' This aimed at someone who gives herself the
title of 'Mrs'. Again, we have some very accomplished playing by Sladen
and Bond as the two women sensitively discuss...well...their barreness. Of course it then flips over into bitterness as Wormwood takes a pot shot
at Sarah Jane's new found sense of purpose as a result of her surrogacy
of Luke. There's a hint at ancient myth and Biblical symbolism with the
story positioning both Sarah Jane and Wormwood as barren women, with
Luke perhaps indicative of some form of immaculate conception. It's
again telling that Wormwood bitches to Sarah about the sonic lipstick
being 'very female' and demands 'a more masculine influence' as they go
for handbags at dawn in the shop. Of course, the male influence is
revealed as Kaagh and the pair of them are double crossing the Bane in
order to revive the 'creation figure' of Horath.

Kaagh
becomes Wormwood's fawning eunuch which is a rather demeaning role for
a former warlord of the Sontaran race and a further reference to
Wormwood's power representing a suggestion of anxiety about male
castration. Little man syndrome, indeed. Samantha Bond caresses that scroll a little too sensuously
for my liking and I'm pretty sure she has cottoned on to what exactly
is going on and is camping it up for all it's worth. When Luke asserts
himself and stands up to Wormwood she again gets rather aroused and
wants to possess him. Her ownership of Luke comes from the need to
break the mother/son bond between him and Sarah Jane. However, their
passionate declaration of their familial love for one another is
something that Mrs. Wormwood would never understand. She simply sees
her relationship to Luke as one of sexual and intellectual possession.

...a mother bequeathing her son with the power of life and death

Oh
dear. Bloody Gita's back, sticking her nose in again. Except, she
stumbles across a rather oddly behaving Major Kilburne and it's at this
moment that it becomes apparent that Kilburne isn't what he seems. Not
someone you'd invite in for a quick cuppa then, Gita. Meanwhile Luke is
dragged off to another desolate factory location where he rejects
Wormwood's aspirations for him to be her concubine. Tommy Knight is
exceptionally good, getting across Luke's antipathy for the woman's plan of
galactic revenge. Bond also gives superb value, managing that tricky
balance between sincerity and ham that all good villains need to
achieve. Luke establishes that Horath actually isn't a living creature
and that he/she/it is a cyborg computer capable of
reshaping the universe and 'can destroy worlds and give birth to them
in a blink of an eye'. Some sort of interstellar father/mother then, a galactic cradle/grave to which Wormwood compares herself. And with
that she hands her 'prince' the glowing dildo of Horath, a mother
bequeathing her son with the power of life and death.

Brilliantly,
that scene sucks the audience in and just for a brief second you think
Luke's fallen under her spell. And then he legs it. What a fantastic
twist to a carefully built scene. After a bit of a chase, a couple of
explosions and some gloating, Kaagh decides to finish Luke off.
However, Wormwood puts him firmly in his place, completing her
castration of the warrior and reducing him to the status of slave.
Whilst this life/death struggle is played out, Clyde gets all 007 (the
look on Lethbridge-Stewart's face is priceless) and the gang have to
deal with Major Kilburne. Kilburne is, of course, Bane. But Nick
Courtney rises to the occasion and obviously relishes the scene where
Lethbridge-Stewart promptly shoots the creature with his walking stick
gun! Pity about that appalling 'slimy creep' gag from Sarah Jane,
though.

...he simply says, 'I don't want to be a God' when she offers him the universe on a plate.

The
climax to all this running around is Horath's dildo opening a big hole
in time and space at a neolithic stone circle. Hang on, let me read
that again....yeah, that's about the right level of innuendo. And holes
are very important symbols when it comes to fertility rites and
fertilising power and representing the 'opening' of this world
into other planes of existence. Oh, whilst we're at it, it might be
useful to flag up that the herb wormwood is often used as a tea to give
to pregnant women to ease labour pains. When she prepares to insert the
scroll in the hole (I'm sorry, I can't help it) Wormwood even gets a
solicitor joke in when Kaagh reminds her of their partnership. But
ironically, only the human Luke can enter the circle and open the
gateway. I love that moment where he simply says, 'I don't want to be a
God' when she offers him the universe on a plate.
It's the culmination
of a very strong character arc that's been developing for Luke over the
series. And Bond's reaction when Sarah Jane arrives and Luke runs to
her with a shout of 'Mum!' is beautifully played. She's defeated by
very simple human emotions, especially unconditional love, and that
resignation is there in her desperate pleading for him.

Kaagh
does the honourable thing and with a shout of 'Sonta-ha!' he pulls
himself and Wormwood into the black hole. The episode ends on a
delightful coda that embraces true friendship, including Sir Alistair of course,
and the series de rigeur visual motif of star-gazing wonderment at the universe. A great
conclusion to the story and a script that gets the series on track
again after a run of uneven stories that took liberties with character
development at the behest of recycled ideas. Clyde and Luke did get
some terrific episodes, Sarah went somewhat out of character in the
penultimate story and I'm afraid Rani and her family ended up as the
major casualties this year. Rani is great but there needs to be some serious work done to
make Gita and Haresh more appealing. But at least this is a high note
to end this series on.

December 15, 2008

And so The Sarah Jane Adventures have come full circle. In writing about Revenge of the Slitheen I commented on how brain-splitting children’s television is these days with its fast cutting, bouncy graphics in primary colours and music which sounds like a cut up remix of a Disaster Area concert. In places it makes the promotional film for the London Olympics with the rubbish logo look like a genius piece of sedate modernism and that’s just the bumpers and idents between the programmes. Now, during ...

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy of the Bane (both episodes)

… everything in the programme itself is brash, loud and disjointed, powered by a kind of atomised storytelling which has replaced such incidentals as logical plot structure and coherent character motivation and by the end of the two episodes I was left in a grumpy old mood desperately muttering like a jilted lover “Was it me? Was it something I did? Did I not see the signs? What does he have that I don’t?” Well, perhaps not the last bit, but it’s ages (well a few weeks at least) since I felt so angry about a piece of drama. Not just because as a finale to what's been a half decent series its so disappointing, but because it was let out of its cage by the same people who brought you so many sublime episodes of Doctor Who this year.

If there’d been a camera in the room I suspect the expression on my face would have been somewhat like John Lyman’s during that brilliant episode of The West Wing in which he’s woken up with a hangover and Joey Lucas’s translator Kenny is shouting in his face. He looks rotten, his eyes desperately trying to focus on something, anything, coherent until in the end he has to admit “I have no clue what is happening right now.” That was me during Bane II as the convoluted plot convulsed into the kind of inherent ramblings which tend to give our favourite genre a bad name. It’s an alien doodah which when combined with a thingy could bring about the end of the universe. For the first time this series I did finally, genuinely felt like a teacher trying to look cool listening to The Jonas Brothers at a school disco.

There’s little point in me listing all of the irritations – we’ll be here all night – so I’ll just offer two.

Firstly, there’s the treatment of the Brig. I’d quite looked forward to his return to television, though for some of us he’s not really a character that’s been away with his appearances in the novels and Nick Courtney’s frequent visits to the Big Finish studios for this and that, notably his appearances in the U*N*I*T spin-off mini-series as well as the, I think, underrated video Downtime which also featured Lis Sladen briefly as Sarah-Jane. It seemed like an odd fit that he’d be resurrected for The Sarah Jane Adventures anyway considering the target audience, but the SJS connection is strong enough and it might well be a pre-cursor to his re-emergence in the mother programme, where the details of his mission to Peru might yet be revealed.

His dislike for the newer, vastly more militaristic UNIT is a welcome continuation of some of the themes begun in those spin-offs and is extrapolated well in his opening scene, as he wipes the monocle from fake Major Cal’s face. The reunion with Ms Smith was just ambiguous enough not to render any of those spin-off stories non-canonical. Nick Courtney has a ready gravitas which makes you wonder why he’s not employed more often (though watch out for him playing the Archbishop of Canterbury in this thing soon). He obviously relished the chance to be back on tv and a through line to the man we loved so in the seventies and eighties. It’s nice introduction for viewers too, he’s an old friend of Sarah-Jane who used to be in UNIT and knows how to get into the spooky Black Archives.

The problem is, because the kids are rightly supposed to be the stars, The Brig predictably gets sidelined and unlike School Reunion, the episode isn’t about the meeting of old friends and before long it becomes apparent that the man is rather incidental to the story. Courtney spends most of the following episode and a half standing or sitting around reacting to whatever’s happening and though he does get a couple of action beats including some nice cane work, he’s essentially a bystander to the main story, which I know was often the case in the 70s but seems like wasted opportunity here. Would it be so wrong for him to have a moment where he imparts some wisdom and be allowed to offer some impression to the kids watching as to what makes him so brilliant that the Doctor would name drop him at a time of crisis?

Of course, the reason the episode isn’t about Alistair is because it’s about Luke and his mummy dilemma and it’s how he fitted into the story which is the other thing which really got my goat. We’ve watched the bond develop convincingly between Luke and Sarah-Jane over the past couple of seasons and it’s interesting to see the show attempting to address the emotional apocalypse an adopted kid his age in the real world might have to address when the real thing wanders in either at the supermarket, home, or as is most likely these days on The Jeremy Kyle Show. Perhaps these kids in the real world might think that underneath these people are giant calamari desperate to steal them away from the life they know, with Spain the destination instead of the universe, but Luke’s not really the role model the adopter would want to hold up as an example of how to deal with the situation.

It’s just a pity that after an excellent showing in the last story, Luke spends most of Enemy of the Bane being psychologically shoved about so easily by his ‘real’ mother Mrs Wormwood. You can just about see the reason behind busting her from the protective shielding, but after that’s gone so well and he’s essentially been kidnapped and tried to dash off with the cosmic doodah, why does he then go and take it to the centre of the stone circle knowing the consequences it’ll have for humanity? The reason is because writer Phil Ford needs him to. Having logically written Mrs Wormwood behind the shielding he needs to get her out so that the next bit of plot can be dealt with. Equally, there isn’t a big special effects climax if Luke isn’t somehow compelled into doing the dirty even if the status quo hasn’t changed that much since five minutes before when he ran off with it.

I should say here that if Samantha Bond wanted me to do anything for her, anything at all, I’m there – her hypnotic voice has driven me absolutely crazy for years and her rather arch performance was one of the few highlights in the these episodes. Except she’s so clearly still evil, still mental, and still untrustworthy, that it undermines our belief in Luke’s intelligence that he persists in doing pretty much everything she says even when the results have proved to be so disastrous. I know there’s an argument to be made for the series being for a younger age group where writing has to lack most of its ambiguity and there’s bound to be a certain panto elements, as we’re constantly frowning in disbelief at the stupidity of our heroes, but when Jack (not Harkness) sells his cow for some beans we get watch a giant beanstalk grow and meet a giant, and I’m not sure any of the results of the over complicated bit of fantasy on offer here was as relevant or immeditately exciting as that.

Now, I know this is harsh commentary for what is essentially a production with its heart in the right place and it could just be a pre-christmas bit of malevolence before my usual festive benevolence descends. All of performances were excellent; Anthony O'Donnell’s Commander Kaagh in particular worked much better in this context than in his own story, seeking honour through freelance work rather than the usual Sontaran oaths. And it scores marks for not also somehow involving the Chandras in the solution to the alien story as a counterpoint to the still lamented Jacksons; clearly if Haresh is up to anything dodgy they’re saving it for the next series – I also hope they could find something more interesting for Gita to do than apparently get Sarah-Jane’s name wrong and have her in some state of catatonia.

I just wish that after generating what has been a very good drama series the finale hadn’t been so relentlessly mundane and predictable and exactly the kind of thing children’s television is criticised for being. Then again, I’m willing to admit its possible that I’ve just had a sense of humour bypass for a week and I’ll rewatch this in the future (as we fans always do) I’ll be less harsh and grudgingly see it’s good points – it’s happened recently with Planet of the Ood which I absolutely hated on my first po-faced viewing. Plus, I am thirty-four years old. If I was about ten, I’d probably think this was the most exciting fifty minutes I’ve ever, ever seen. At least until Christmas Day.

December 10, 2008

I don't know how many of you remember Les Dawson and Roy
Barraclough and their double act as fishwives Cissie and Ada but it
struck me at about ten minutes into Enemy Of The Bane
that, in similar fashion, Mrs. Wormwood and Sarah Jane had started how they meant to go on.
And on. And on. As the highly camp Samantha Bond and our Lis traded
insults in a disused factory I did imagine them leaning across their
garden wall as they bickered at each other about the Archetype, Bubbleshock and
Bane. And no, that's not a firm of solicitors. Mrs. Wormwood's
elaborate calling card - pretending to buy flowers, subduing Gita
(permanently I'd hoped) and leaving a cheque to pique Sarah Jane's
interest - seemed a tad on the excessive side but who cares when Bond
and Sladen take the crackling dialogue and run with it, trading bitchy
insults whilst running away from monstrous CGI blobs. You could tell
director Graeme Harper was savouring this in the way he shot the
sequence of Mrs. Wormwood and Sarah Jane belting down the corridor to
get out of the factory. A frenzy of close-ups, medium shots and some
great low angle stuff are joined by a quick flash of Samantha Bond's
high heels clacking along very camply. A bit of utterly gratuitous shoe fetish that reminded me of Chrissy's high-heeled magnificence back in The Last Sontaran. I'd also like to know Mrs.
Wormwood's tips for keeping a violent purple hood permanently stuck to
her head too.

...the Tunguska scroll looks...well...a bit like an ornate dildo

It transpires that the Bane are out to get their revenge on Mrs.
Wormwood for the Bubbleshock affair but Sarah Jane's having none of it.
After Clyde's priceless, 'But I thought you said she was an ugly
bug-eyed squid thing' and Mrs. Wormwood's exasperated retort of
'Children!', the first hints of what writer Phil Ford is actually
wanting to talk about in the drama start to emerge, even after the
rather tongue in cheek one-upwomanship between Sarah Jane and Mrs.
Wormwood as they mark out their territory in the attic. This is about
family. Yes, the major theme of this second series is brought out again
for another airing. It's clear from Luke's reaction to his Bane
mother/creator that there are issues a plenty lurking under the surface
of this witty and rather arch episode. Both women squabble rather
broodily over the confused Luke and there's a whiff of a strangely
skewed Oedipal love-hate undercurrent emanating from the relationship
between Luke and Mrs. Wormwood. In fact, I'd go as far as to say she
displays a certain amount of sexual desire for Luke, with her purring,
'I made you rather handsome, didn't I?' One could also argue that the
displaced bits of Horath, a sort of dismembered father-figure,
represent the absence of mature masculinity in a world populated by
brooding mothers and immature teenagers. It's also significant to note
that the Tunguska scroll looks...well...a bit like an ornate dildo.

Sladen and Courtney play the reuniting of Sarah and
Lethbridge-Stewart to perfection

And the dildo is kept in the Black Archive. That mention of UNIT and
their stash of alien artefacts neatly swings the script towards the
highlight of the episode. The return of Nick Courtney and Sir Alistair
Lethbridge-Stewart. Even before we meet him, UNIT is posited as another
symbol of the story's play on the role of the masculine with Clyde
getting scolded by Sarah Jane for thinking the use of guns will solve
all problems. Still, it is a delight to see him back and Courtney is in
fine form as he dresses down the rather annoying Major Kilburne who
prattles on about 'homeworld security' in front of a living legend who
has dealt with his fair share of what he charmingly refers to as
'space thuggery'. Kilburne's an odd one and Simon Chadwick's
performance is angular and brittle, indicating that he's not quite the
full shilling, especially with that unsettling moment where he peers at himself in the metal lamp. And Sladen and Courtney play the reuniting of Sarah and
Lethbridge-Stewart to perfection even though it's purely a fanboy
pleasing moment and the kids watching won't have a clue who the hell he
is. Perhaps this will usher in a cameo in the parent series for good
measure.

The brief moments between Clyde and Luke, discussing Clyde's dad, leads
us to the inevitable scene where Luke's confusion about his parental
stock will necessitate a confrontation with Mrs. Wormwood. Clyde
recognises that without his dad he wouldn't be alive and this spurs
Luke into demanding to see her, despite Sarah's wishes to the contrary.
It's a nicely played scene, showing off both Daniel Anthony and Tommy
Knight to great advantage. The following scene between Knight and Bond,
as Wormwood turns on the charm to escape from the attic, is also a
triumph and again emphasises the themes of children and their
relationships with their parents that's been running through this
series. Here, it is Luke's turn to shed some light upon the woman that
created him within the context of nature versus nurture in the
development of adolescent social orientation.

Universal domination
and the sweetness of revenge are on the menu once more.

We get to see the Black Archive but I was slightly disappointed and had
hoped for a few recognisable objects littering the place as a little treat for us older
fans. All we ended up with was a nod to Raiders Of The Lost Ark
and mention of Queen Victoria. A shame really. The episode's
cliffhanger mixes Sarah and Rani stealing the dildo of Horath and
causing a security breach at UNIT intercut with Wormwood's battle against one of
the Bane that hilariously turns up on the doorstep posing as a
pensioner collecting for charity. Ah, but then there's the bluff and
Wormwood it seems is in league with Kaagh, the Sontaran seen off by
Sarah at the beginning of the series this year. Universal domination
and the sweetness of revenge are on the menu once more. A good opening
episode, well directed by Harper and full of wonderful performances,
especially from Bond and Courtney, and a reminder of the sheer fun this
series can be.

December 07, 2008

Anyone who has been following this season of plays starring Paul McGann (especially if like me they’ve gone for the post-radio, extra-time option) might have seen the trailer for the BBC’s Christmas offerings and grinned at the shots of Sheridan Smith dashing about in a hoody, closely followed by an inscrutable man with long floppy hair. It’s obviously the Jonathan Creek special, but it’s ironic that at the end of this series of Eighth Doctor plays, we finally have a proper visual reference for Lucie. Expect a mash-up on YouTube by Boxing Day. That’s assuming whoever edits it is still a fan after listening to The Vengeance of Morbius, the kind of episode which is a bugger to write about and remain completely spoiler free.